General relativistic collapse of textures

Abstract

We present an exact self-similar solution of the coupled Einstein-σ model equations which describes the general relativistic collapse of global textures. In one coordinate system the texture geometry has a simple interpretation in terms of a deficit solid angle. We also briefly discuss the behavior of matter and light in this geometry. In particular we show that the weak field approximation for the metric perturbations of flat space texture solutions is quantitatively quite reliable.